"Don't be. Believe me, your strength has impressed the hell out of me and that's something that's hard to do where I'm concerned." He brushed a stray strand of her hair back from her forehead. The warmth of his hand on her skin sent a comforting chill through her.
His gaze was kind. His touch gentle. She wanted this moment to last until it drove out all the pain she felt.
Most of all, she wanted him.
That thought terrified her.
Yet, he'd been with her through all of this. Strong. Protective. Comforting. Dependable.
Everything a man should be. Things as a Qillaq she shouldn't want. Things as a woman she needed.
She swallowed as she pushed those thoughts away. "Thank you."
He inclined his head to her.
A furious light sparked in his eyes as he returned to where Fain watched them. "You are such an insensitive ass. You know you don't just blurt out someone's parents are dead and then describe it."
Fain wasn't the least bit contrite. "Why? You didn't vomit. Besides, I'd kill to have someone give me news that good." He glanced back to where Desideria was pushing herself to her feet. "By the way, is she going to do that for long? If she is, I say we leave her in the head and flush her out the air lock once we're launched."
Caillen tossed a knife at his head which he caught without hesitation.
"What?" Fain was truly baffled by Caillen's indignation and her sympathy for her mother. "It's not my fault I forget how sensitive you humans are. Our women don't cry."
"Oh trust me, Fain. Any living Andarion female who's forced to bed down with you weeps hysterically at the mere thought of that horror."
Fain threw the knife back at him.
Caillen caught it without blinking.
Desideria had barely pulled herself together when another Andarion male entered the shuttle and quickly closed the door behind him. This one she recognized from Caillen's pictures.
It was Dancer.
Dancer scowled as he felt the tension between them. His gaze went from his brother to her and then to Caillen who still looked like he wanted to shoot Fain. "What'd I miss?"
"Your brother's an idiot," Caillen snarled.
"Yeah, I know."
Fain scoffed at Dancer's calm acceptance. "You don't have to agree with him."
"You don't have to be an idiot either. But I notice that doesn't stop you from it. And I've seen you actually use your brain, so I know you have one." Dancer glanced back to Caillen. "So what'd he do?"
Fain gestured toward them. "I just told them their parents were dead and she threw up.
"Ah, krik, Fain..." He broke off into Andarion and for several seconds the two of them argued back and forth while gesturing wildly.
Caillen whistled to get their attention. "You two can play a round of Insult My Gene Pool later. Right now, we need to focus on getting us out of here."
Fain snorted. "Not so easy, brother. Anyone leaving here will be scanned for hijackers. I don't think you understand that there's a ten-million-credit bounty on each of your heads. For that kind of money, you're lucky I'm not handing you in."
Caillen was stunned by an amount that was usually reserved for traitors, pedophiles and rogue assassins... and now two royal members of the council. "Ten million credits?"
"Each," Fain reiterated.
"Shit. For that, I'm tempted to hand myself in."
Dancer, who normally only went by his last name Hauk, because face it, Dancer sucked, was a smaller version of his older brother. But no less fierce. Aside from their difference in height and build, it would be hard to tell them apart. "Don't be so hasty, Cai. Alive, you're only worth three."
Now that was just cold and wrong. But it also told him that they were being framed by someone who wanted to make damn sure the truth never came out. "Are you kidding?"
Hauk shook his head.
"Who issued the bounty?" Caillen asked.
"The League," Hauk said snidely. "They're forcing each of your planets to cough up the money."
Great. So much for hoping the one leading the investigation would help him find the truth. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy. All the League would want was closure and if they had to kill two innocent people for it, they really couldn't care less. "Did anyone defend us?"
Hauk shook his head again. "Threw you to the wolves." He flipped on a monitor and did a quick search to show Caillen the cold, harsh truth. News article after news article had them convicted. Everyone they'd interviewed said they weren't surprised by either of their actions.
Even Desideria's two sisters.
You have Darling and Maris. No one had interviewed them and they hadn't betrayed him, but then given the severity of the crime they were charging them with that was probably for the best. Had they stepped forward at this point to defend them, they would probably be charged as accessories.
Which meant he might have other allies he didn't know about. He held that thought tight.
Until he watched as his uncle showed up on a vidclip to speak to the news agencies from the Arimanda. If he didn't know better, he'd swear the man actually looked grief stricken while he addressed the vultures who'd come to cash in on his pain. "It is with a sad heart that I'm forced to step into a place I never thought I'd occupy. My brother was a great emperor and I know I'm a shallow substitution. We are still reeling from the actions of my nephew. I can't understand how anyone could be so ruthless and unfeeling, especially toward their own father who loved them so much. I tried to tell Evzen that no one can tame a wild animal. True to the generosity of his spirit, he refused to believe it and he let the love of his son guide him to suicide. I don't know what madness infected the prince, but I can assure all of you that he will be held accountable for his actions and I will not rest until he's behind bars where he belongs and is executed for this heinous crime."
Love you too, you old bastard.
Caillen shut the browser off. Last thing he wanted to see was any more allegations directed toward him. "Why do they think I did it?"
Hauk pulled up another clip. This was security footage on board the ship. And there in his father's room, standing over his body, was a man who looked so much like him that even he doubted his innocence.
Holy...
Hauk nodded as his expression mirrored the sick horror Caillen felt. "You want to live. We've got to find this asshole and expose him as the killer or whoever doctored the footage. Nyk, Syn, Shahara and Jayne are already on it."
"What about my mother?" Desideria's features were pale from her grief. She was still beautiful, but she looked so tired that all he wanted to do was make this better for her.
If only he could.
"That's where it's really odd," Fain said, directing their attention back to the monitor and a new clip that was filled with static. "There's no footage from your mother's room, Princess. Someone tampered with the camera. But two members of her Guard swear they saw you running out of there right before her body was discovered and that they pursued you only to find you fighting with Caillen. At first, they claim they thought he was attacking you. Then when you two turned on them to fight and then escaped together, they realized you were working as a team to kill your parents."
She gaped at how preposterous that was. "I'm sorry, but that's the dumbest story ever conceived. Are you telling me anyone is stupid enough to believe it?"
Hauk scoffed. "Two words. League bureaucrats. Thinking waved bye-bye to them a long time ago."
He had a point.
"I can't believe this," she said, wanting to hunt down her mother's Guard and carve her initials into their useless brains.
Caillen reviewed some of the data that Fain was still calling up.
Desideria moved to stand so close to him that her breath fell against his skin, tickling his flesh and making him wish he had a spare moment so that she could do that to his entire body. "They can't honestly believe this."
Caillen met her gaze, wishing he could be so naive. But he knew better.
"Greed akes people stupid. Always. It stands to reason in their world that we would kill our parents to inherit their positions. Face it, it's a common enough occurrence. Why should anyone doubt it?"
Hauk nodded in agreement. "Darling said that you'd already been suspicious of your uncle."
"I was."
Fain gave him an arch stare. "Was?"
Caillen took over the search as he reviewed the news reports about his father's death. "Something's not adding up to me." It was too easy a jump to his uncle.
Wasn't it?
But then he'd seen people do far worse for a lot less. He didn't want to believe that the brother his father had loved and trusted would be so cold.
However, that was as cliche as kids killing parents for inheritance. His uncle made sense.
Fain scoffed at his doubt. "What are you? Trisani now? You want to give me the winning lottery numbers while you're on a roll?"
He ignored Fain's sarcasm as he rethought his earlier conviction. "I'm telling you, something's wrong. How did both get killed on a ship with that kind of security? And so close to us leaving? At basically the same time?"
Hauk answered before Fain could. "Obviously the assassination was in place and they sped it up after you guys evaced so that they could frame you."
He just couldn't make himself buy Hauk's explanation. It just didn't fit. There was something more here. Something they didn't know about.
To his amazement, Desideria backed his position. "Caillen's right. It's too convenient and two well executed to be pulled off by two independent parties. Why would they both strike right at that same time? It smacks of collusion."
Caillen pulled the clip where his uncle was being notified of his father's death. The man actually stumbled from the weight of the news and had to be held up by his guards.
Could he be that good an actor?
It was possible and yet...
Why would his uncle want to kill Desideria's mother? Aside from the fact she was a roaring bitch, he had nothing to gain by killing her too.
But who did?
Caillen stepped back. "I need to talk to my uncle."
"Are you insane?" Hauk's jaw went slack. "He'll have you arrested if not executed on sight. The man either thinks you killed his brother, or, and more to the point, he knows for a fact you didn't and doesn't want you to talk and expose him."
Hauk was right, but Caillen refused to listen to reason. Why should he start that bad habit now when he'd never listened to it before? "Work with me, Hau. Let's say for a minute that my uncle's not behind this... that means his life will be in danger too. The more I think about this, the more it's looking like some kind of coup."
Fain frowned. "But why would the Qills lie about--"
"Would you stop using that term?" Desideria snapped, cutting him off. "We don't like it. We're Qillaqs not Qills."
Caillen admired her temerity, especially against Fain who was known to gut people for glancing at him askance.
Fain passed her an annoyed look, but true to form, refused to apologize. "Why would they lie?"
"I don't know." Caillen sighed. "But why hit both the Qillaqs"--he stressed the word to let Desideria know that he was trying not to insult her--"and the Exeterians? There has to be some connection."
Hauk scratched his chin. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that the queen was about to start a war with your allies?"
Caillen sifted through more data. "There's some vital something here that we're missing."
Fain sighed. "I think you're giving it too much credit. No one says the two have to be connected. Weird shit happens. Trust me. I'm usually its favorite victim."
Desideria narrowed her gaze as if she was still thinking it all through. "When I overheard them plotting to kill my mother, there was no mention of your father or you. Maybe it is coincidence."
Caillen shook his head. "I don't believe in coincidences."
Hauk exchanged a wary look with Fain. "You said your uncle's been a total bastard to you since you started living with your father. Maybe he's the one who hired your kidnappers to kill you as a kid to get you out of the way so that he could inherit."
That was just dumb, but he wasn't about to say it to Hauk and start a fight. "Why wait to seize the throne then?" Had his uncle done that, he would have killed his father years ago and seized power.
No. Something else was going on here. He just needed to find out what.
"We're onto something." Caillen breathed. "I just don't have enough pieces to put it together yet."
Hauk let out a low growl as if he was as frustrated as Caillen. "First thing is to find the shooter, then, and question him."
Caillen agreed. "Just don't let Nykyrian interrogate him. We need the hitter capable of speech."
Desideria frowned as she thought more about it too. "Wouldn't it be better to talk to my mother's Guard? They were trying to kill me and set us both up. You think they would know something about all this?"
"Princess Pain has a point," Fain said.
She glared at him. "And could you please stop calling me that? My name's Desideria."
"But I like Princess Pain. It has a nice ring to it."
Desideria barely resisted the urge to choke him. He was so much taller she'd be lucky if she could even get her hands around his throat. "It was bad enough when there was just Caillen. Now I have his friends to irritate me too. Gods save me."
The words were barely out of her mouth before something struck the side of the ship.
Hard.
All of a sudden, a gruff voice rang out. "Open up! We're detecting unauthorized heat signatures and weight in your ship."
Fain let out a foul curse. "Ding-dong, children. The authorities are here."
18
Hauk groaned audibly at the sound of the Enforcers firing on their door hatch, trying to break in. He met Caillen's gaze. "For the record, it's a death sentence to anyone caught helping you guys. Just so you know."
"Appreciate the IFO update, pun'kin." Caillen made that strange clicking noise with his tongue at him. "And that's new for us how?"
Hauk sighed heavily. "I hate you, Dagan. I really do."
"Know you do." Caillen started flipping switches over his head. "Now pucker up, baby, you're about to have to kiss my ass for saving yours."
Fain snorted as he pulled his mask back into place. "I'll get the engines fired. May the gods be with us. This has all the markings of a very short trip."
Caillen smirked with a nonchalance Desideria definitely didn't feel as he took over the controls and did a prelim check. "Who wants to live forever?"
Actually, she wouldn't mind a small dose of immortality. The concept worked well for her.
Fain muttered as the engines roared to life, "Yeah, but no one said I wanted to die today."
In spite of the danger and her racing heart, Desideria laughed at his dry words. Normal men would be terrified, but Caillen, Hauk and Fain seemed to thrive on imminent danger. Their attitudes were infectious and it brought the warrior in her to the forefront and made her ready to fight to the bitter end. "Where are the guns?"
All three men turned to her with curious stares that annoyed her. "I know how to fight, boys. I am Qillaq." She narrowed her gaze at Caillen. "You might be able to fly anything with wings. I can shoot anything with a trigger and if it can be aimed, I can use it to maim."
He did a charming sweep of her body that turned her body strangely hot. It also made her feel very feminine and desirable. "Baby, I never doubted you for a minute."
Fain jerked his chin to Hauk. "Take her up and don't get hurt. I'd have to kill your ass if you did."
She didn't even want to comment on the oddity of that particular threat. Hauk inclined his head to Fain before he pulled Desideria toward the rear of their ship.
Caillen slid gracefully from the navigator's into the pilot's chair as an ion cannon blast struck the shuttle so hard it caused it to rock. Just like old times for him--it wasn't a launch unless he was under massiv
e local fire. The steel around them squealed in protest, but lucky for them it held. They only had a few seconds before the authorities were in and they were dead.
Really, it would be impossible to fly a shuttle with a giant hole in the door and he ought to know since he'd tried to do it on more than one occasion.
The good news was, he'd actually succeeded in doing it.
Once.
Don't go there. Some memories just needed to be purged.
Fain arched a brow as he took the con. "You going to jerk my guts out?"
"Probably."
Another loud blast rocked the craft.
"Now that's just rude." Caillen flipped another switch over his head which generated a pulse shield. He heard the soldiers curse and whine as it knocked them flying.
Good, you little bastards. I hope it leaves a mark and ruins your sex plans for at least a week.
He did the final sys check and felt the blood pick up its pace in his bloodstream. The ship was ready to launch.
Except for the fact that the hangar bay door was still closed and reinforcements were arriving by the dozens to keep it blocked and them from leaving.
"That don't look promising," Hauk said through the intercom.
All of a sudden, blasts shot from their ship to the Enforcers. The authorities scrambled for cover as the bright color bursts exploded around them and left marks all over the walls of the bay.
Putting the mic in his ear, Caillen grinned at Desideria's precision. She nailed everything she aimed for which wasn't the soldiers. She blasted close enough to keep them down or scatter them away from the exit, but not enough to kill.
Go, baby. He respected her mercy and it said a lot about her that she wasn't gunning them down.
While she did that, Fain hammered the hangar door with their cannons. The hole he created wasn't that big, but Caillen should be able to squeeze through.
Unless he sneezed. The slightest miscalculation would kill them faster than the Enforcers.
Caillen dropped the grav weights and held the throttle wide open as he headed for the opening at full speed--a fool's pace indeed and one he was famed for.
He scowled at the angry voices from the Enforcers' open channel that echoed in his ear. "Is my Andarion rusty or did they just call us the ass of a dung beetle?"
Hauk laughed over the intercom. "You're an idiot. They said they're launching fighters to come at us."
"Ah. I think I like being called a dung beetle's ass better. Guess we better go, huh?"
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